Thursday, March 12, 2015

It's slowly happening...some people at school are getting how he thinks!

A couple days behind, but that seems to be a regular occurrence lately. This week Nixon's struggling in school adjusting to a full schedule again, Mac being gone and it being just the 2 of us at home. Tuesday and Wednesday Nixon spent over an hour out of class during those 2 days. I'm trying everything to get him back on track, but really it's up to him to find his groove at school again.
He found it today:

When I picked him up, I was introduced to Ms. J. Nixon was very excited for me to meet her, because tomorrow after he finished his lunch he gets to help her wheel around the trash cans in the cafeteria. The Special Education teacher introduced me to her with her name and then also as "Number 11". Apparently, for the first few weeks Nixon knew Ms J he only referred to her as "Number 11" and got very frustrated when no one knew who he was talking about. As the teacher was telling me the story of how everyone was trying to figure out what "11" meant, I noticed the badge Ms J wore with the bold red 11 on it. I let the teacher finish and then explained why Nixon likely identified Ms J as "11".

This actually isn't really uncommon. It's known as "face blindness". Some people with ASD don't recognize people by faces but rather other identifying features they notice about the person. Nixon likes to identify people by their skin color, hair color or jacket colors, so if he noticed Ms J's badge had a number on it, he'd identify her by the number. Since learning her name he's begun calling her "11, Ms. J".
After I explained, both the aide (who was also with them to say goodbye to Nixon for the day) and the Special Ed teacher said that made sense, knowing what they do about Nixon. They also said they're going to try to think like him next time he's trying to explain something but getting frustrated, as was the case when the question of "what/who is 11?".